Check your resume against an ATS

No. There is no upload step and no server that could receive the file — the tool runs as code in this browser tab, works on the copy your browser opened, and forgets it when you close the tab. You can check this yourself: open your browser’s network panel and run the tool. You will see the page, its scripts and the ads that pay for the site — and no request carrying your file, because there is no endpoint to carry it to.

It starts at 100 and subtracts for each problem, weighted by how badly that problem breaks a real parse. A PDF with no text layer scores zero outright, because nothing else matters if the document cannot be read at all. Missing contact details, missing section headings and unreadable dates cost the most; phrasing issues cost least. The number is a summary of the findings below it, not a verdict from any particular employer’s system.

No, and be wary of anything that claims to. Employers run different systems, configured differently, and none publishes its rules. What this checks is the layer underneath all of them: whether the text can be extracted, whether the sections and dates are findable, and whether your wording matches the posting. A resume that fails here fails everywhere; one that passes has cleared the part that is actually knowable.

Because a parser never sees the design. It reads the text in the order the PDF stores it, so multi-column layouts interleave, text inside images disappears entirely, icon fonts extract as meaningless symbols, and details tucked into a header can be skipped. The fix is rarely to make it uglier — it is to keep the body single-column and put every fact in real, selectable text.

Only where they are true. The keyword check exists to show you which relevant terms you have described in different words, not to supply a list to paste in. A recruiter reads the same document the software scanned, and stuffing — particularly hidden white text — is both detectable and disqualifying.